The Social Construction of New Marketing Paradigms: The Influence of Personal Perspective

Abstract

Marketing is no stranger to "big new ideas" which purport to be new paradigms for the study of the discipline. Relationship marketing, one-to-one marketing and post- modern marketing typify recent ideas, which have gained much support. However, it is widely recognised that, compared to the natural sciences, the marketing discipline has created relatively little knowledge which can be described as genuinely new. In the absence of any objective reality, marketing knowledge reflects the interpretation of reality by individuals. Surprisingly, relatively little analysis has been undertaken into the source of new marketing ideas and the influence of social construction on these ideas. This paper presents a review of contemporary "new marketing" paradigms and uses a framework of time, place and role to explain the derivation of these ideas. It is concluded that proclamations of new marketing may say more about the proclaimer than the subject being proclaimed.